Why Alice Waters Is Hungry For Change

Alice Waters, mother of the farm-to-table movement and founder of the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, talks about her culinary awakening, eating sustainably on a budget, and how she plans to change America’s troubled food system, one child at a time.

Prevention: How did you develop such a passion for quality, sustainable ingredients? Alice Waters: I grew up in New Jersey in the 1950s right at the start of fast food, and my mother was someone who really cared about giving us healthy food. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a very good cook and I was a very picky eater as a child! I really only liked corn and tomatoes, so it was a good thing my parents had a victory garden and I was able to eat all the corn and tomatoes I wanted. Looking back, I have to believe that the experience of seeing things grow added to my appreciation of food.

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But it wasn’t until I studied abroad in France that I was awakened by the experience of eating in a delicious way. There was a marketplace in every corner in Paris and I just fell in love. I’d never tasted anything like the food there—whether it was a hot baguette or a little wild strawberry. I was also enchanted with the way people ate, the time they took to eat, and how discriminating everybody was. There were students who would take a half an hour to figure out what restaurant they wanted to go to, and they wanted everything to be fresh and seasonal. So when I came back home, I wanted to eat like that. I never set out with philosophical determinations. I just wanted to live like the French.

When did you first realize there was a problem with the U.S. food system?When I came back from France, I didn’t pay attention at first. I mean, I knew the food system was broken, but I was initially influenced by taste. When I opened Chez Panisse, I thought I was going to be able to find these super flavorful ingredients like what I had in France, but it wasn’t easy. My searches lead me to the organic sustainable farmers and ranchers—they had the best tasting ingredients. And I guess maybe I was a little philosophically predisposed someplace deep down. After all, I grew up in Berkeley in the 1960s and Diet for a Small Planet was everyone’s bible.

When did your motivation change from just taste to something more?There was a point maybe five or 10 years into the restaurant when I just really started to treasure the farmers and all of our suppliers. So we started mentioning exactly where the ingredients came from on the menu, because we wanted to distinguish between regular old food and real food.

Could you tell that small farmers were struggling to compete with big commercial farms?I could. I felt like what they gave me was a gift, it’s what made Chez Panisse successful from the very beginning, so I wanted to pay them directly without any sort of middle man. It was certainly more than other restaurants were paying, but I felt like I was making a donation to the future of the planet by supporting their incredible work.

For people who currently associate the words “organic” and “local” with “expensive” and “unrealistic,” how would you put that cost into perspective?Well, easily. We pay the least of any country for our food. We have been educated by a fast food culture that’s telling us food should be fast, cheap, and easy—and we’ve swallowed that. But all around the planet, since the beginning of time, food has never been cheap. People have understood the hard work the farmer does and been willing to pay for it. So whenever you think of food as being cheap, it means that somebody’s losing out. It can be affordable, but it can never be cheap. And that’s something that we have to learn.

Can you explain that a little more—how can food be affordable but not cheap?Good food can be affordable if people know what to buy and how to prepare it. You can eat that $8 per pound organic beef once in a while, but that gets pricey if you do it every day. There are other foods that are very nutritious and much more economical. Take squash for example. One of those squashes is like 10 meals and it costs nothing. Brown rice and other whole grains like faro combined with beans are also very inexpensive and nutritious. And today, with all of the spices that we have available to us, they can be really delicious. The problem is that we don’t know how to cook anymore, so people need to be willing to experiment in the kitchen. (Get inspired with these 5 simple recipes made with clean, wholesome ingredients.)

How can we get people to embrace real food?We need to start with kids. That’s part of the reason I started the Edible Schoolyard Project. We need to reach children and bring them into a pleasurable, positive, hopeful relationship with healthy food when they’re little, not when they’ve grown up and are already indoctrinated by our fast-food culture. And when we do bring them into that relationship, they fall for it immediately. It’s like they’ve been missing their Mother Nature; they’ve been missing that experience of sitting at a table and sharing food. These are things that have been part of civilization since the beginning of time and, thank God, we’re still hardwired for them.

Tell me about the Edible Schoolyard Project.The program, which around 3,000 schools in the U.S. have adopted by now, integrates cooking and gardening into the actual curriculum. Kids might have a math class where they measure beds in the garden, or a dramatic arts class where they do improvisational cooking. These things are embedded within academics, which is what makes the whole experience so powerful.

Do you think this idea will take off, or does cost pose a problem?I think we really need to look to the most powerful people and bring them into the equation. Kind of how Kennedy brought physical education into the public schools. He didn’t do that with money; he did it with cheerleading. And I believe that Obama could do that today with programs like this. Maybe it could begin with private funding and eventually go to public funding when it gets more support. But I think we have a moral obligation to do this.

What can the average person do to help change the food system?We all need to eat with intention. You need to know where your food comes from and everyone needs to ask questions—Is this free range? How long have these eggs been on the shelf? Where did the chicken’s feed come from? Is it organic? We need to know all the details about it and not assume anything.

What do you want your legacy to be? I hope that globally I’ve helped people understand the priority of feeding everyone real, sustainable food and taking care of the land. If we can do that, I’m hopeful for the future.